If I live long enough to become an old woman, I hope to do so independently. That’s how I live now, and though it wasn’t entirely a matter of choice, I can’t deny that it has its blessings. My home belongs to me and I arrange it the way I want. When I close that door, no matter what horrors lurk outside, nothing much can bother me here.

It’s a house full of memories. I enjoyed almost twelve happy years of marriage here. Indeed, I was proposed to in this house. 

But, if I reach a stage of infirmity where strangers have to care for me, my house will eventually be sold to foot the bill. This home that I have loved, that I would give up willingly to no man, would become the property of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.

There is nothing particularly outrageous or immoral about this. No local authority is so rich that it can fund limitless care for an ageing population. If outrage and immorality have any place in the debate, they have to appear a little higher up the chain of command. The financial assets of the person in receipt of care inevitably get cashed in to pay expenses incurred.  It’s just the way it is.

Some councillors, however, argue that crofts ought to be exempt from this. They wheel out the expected arguments: protect the heritage of crofting; ensure succession within crofting families; crofting is unique . . .

And it all sounds very worthy. Until you remember the prices that some crofts – bare land or with a dwelling house – have been fetching on the open market. Then you might wonder why the Comhairle should treat crofting like a sacred cow when absolutely no one else does, least of all some crofters themselves. 

Which brings us to one of the great unanswered questions of our age: what IS a crofter? At the moment, it’s defined as anyone holding the tenancy of a piece of land legally recognised as a croft. It doesn’t matter whether that person spends every waking moment tilling the soil and tending livestock, or whether they once visited the place when their granny was alive and got boxed by a ram . . . in the eyes of the law, s/he is a crofter.

So, the law, sir, is an asal. It’s the only conclusion we can come to. The crofter with sheep and hay and turnips gets the same protection as the one planning to sell granny’s acres to a housing developer. 

For, the law doesn’t define crofting, really. It defines ‘croft’ and it defines ‘crofter’, but not the verb. Therefore, we are bound by laws designed to protect a  nineteenth-century subsistence lifestyle that no longer exists. It is  actually an obscene warping of the ideals set out in the 1886 Act that croft land has become – to many, though not all –  nothing more than real estate. 

I understand where the councillors are coming from when they suggest tenancies not be regarded as assets. They cite some vague notion of crofting having a worthiness all of its own. There’s a general agreement that it’s part of our heritage, that we have a duty to protect it, and to stop the Comhairle’s finance department getting its mucky paws on granny’s lot.  

But why, when the minute granny is laid in the dust, her heirs will flog it for the most they can get, and pocket the cash? If I was the Director of Finance, I’d feel pretty darn cheated, I can tell you. 

I don’t think, taking fiduciary responsibility and common sense into account, councillors ought to even try taking the local authority on this particular guilt trip. As surely as Chamberlain looked at ‘national affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drain pipe’, I’m afraid these fellows are doing much the same in trying to make their local council carry the burden for national legislative failure.

In the process of depriving the municipal purse, they will also create a two-tier citizenry. And they still won’t be able to define what crofting is . . . which makes all the words about its importance and the case for protecting it ring a little hollow.